Chapter Five

I can barely open the envelope. My fingers refuse to co-operate as if they can’t bring themselves to witness the contents. The handwriting is mine, but someone else has borrowed it. The floor disappears beneath me; acid rises in my throat. I read…

Dear Myles,

I know you will never get this, but something inside compels me to write it anyway. You deserve to know that I loved you once. We may have disagreed on literature, but you helped me rewrite my story and filled the pages with hope. But it was all fantasy. I began to feel as if I existed only through your eyes. Perhaps I was always a phantom. When I met you I was so lost. Still reeling from my diagnosis; confused and bewildered by the implications. You made me believe my condition was just a label. Dissociative identity disorder – meaningless words you said. I was so grateful I clung onto you for dear life. But fear and gratitude are no basis for a relationship. They sour into bitterness and resentment. There are days, Myles, when I don’t know who I am. Not in a pretentious way. I don’t mean like that. Existential angst would provide light relief, believe me. I can’t even count on the fundaments. Who am I? I am many and I am none. There are parts of me so menacing, I fear them. They lurk as if… I literally haunt my own mind, scurrying down corridors and past doors I dare not open. But you prised open the worst one of all, Myles. And we must both live with the consequences. I shouldn’t have pushed you away. You looked so furious when you grabbed my arm… I had seen those eyes before. A dizzying rage possessed me. It was as if the reflex had been there all along; a spring-loaded trap just waiting to bite. No. I will never go back there. I yearn to be marooned; an island no one can invade. Somewhere she will never find me. See, even now she… you… frighten me. As if it wasn’t enough that you violated my body, you are now invading it from within. A benign tumour that swims in a sea of hatred and disgust and threatens to eat me from the inside out. As I write, the cells are dividing. It grows; I shrink. I thrashed your skull until there was more of its contents on the lamp than there was in your head. I watched the guts literally spill from your body… and yet you live on. There is no escape for any of us it seems.

Susan

Beneath these insane ramblings, are scrawled the words:

Blue Anchor. 7pm. David.

I have no idea who he is or what it means. As for Myles, it is all nonsense. He had got up and gone to work as usual, his grey suit… No wait. He came back. The document he forgot… then he saw my bags and… The realisation of what she has done, what I have done hits me so hard I fall to the ground clutching my stomach. Myles. We had grown apart, or rather so close the relationship threatened to engulf me, but… I grab the single pill from my bedside and place it on my tongue. How could I create a life? I who does not even exist. I, a murderess who has destroyed the only love and mercy ever shown to me? But before I swallow, I am consumed with self pity. The pill catches in my throat and I gag, ejecting it across the floor. What if this life within me is who I am? What if I have created myself… I can become the mother I never… 

The room lurches from side to side as the vertigo strikes. As she strikes me again and again; the vein in her temple pulsating, saliva spewing forth as she spits the words over and over that I am worthless and hateful. She knocks me to the ground and thrashes me with the birthday gift my father has given me that very morning. I watch as my seven-year-old-self switches off inside, oblivious to the beatings; she plays with her dolls and has tea with Mrs Poole. If she concentrates really hard on Mrs Poole’s words then the screams become more distant, the pain just a faint crackle of electricity. Mrs Poole tells her she is the brightest sweetest girl in her class and she wishes she had a daughter just like her… But the screams won’t be muffled any longer. 

I retch up hot green bile, my body convulsing as if in labour. Labour. The reality hits me harder than the memory of my mother’s blows. I pick up the familiar pot of pills from my wash bag. Enough for 13 days. How hopeful. What was she planning to do after that, I wonder. Or was this the plan all along? I crunch them between my teeth and gag as the chalky mulch clags in my throat. I swallow and swallow and swallow. The way I have been doing all my life. Swallowing down the agony until it swallows me. Me: a matryoshka of self-hatred and pain. So much pain. I swallow one last time. And wait for liberation.

                                                                                              (by Beth)